Standard health kits
WHO procedure for responding to an order to the field
A formal order is made through a Purchase Authorization (PA), which specifies the following information:
- Sender (name, address, email, phone/fax number)
- Consignee (name, address, email, phone/fax number)
- Special instructions if necessary (i.e. “care of”, ...)
- Allotment and sticker number
- Amount authorized (including freight costs)
- Degree of emergency
- NORMAL: treated by Supply and Shipment Dept in the on-going work load
- URGENT: treated as a priority
- EMERGENCY: treated as a top priority
- Items to be ordered well detailed
3 Pro-formas have to be attached for local purchase.
Circuit of an order
- The Country Office (CO) sends it to Regional Office (RO)
- RO to Head Quarter (HQ): EHA Desk officer (focal point) or directly to Procurement
- Procurement (GMG/PRS) when receiving the PA is:
- Checking if PA correct, if precision needed correspondence with RO
- Checking if funds are available to cover purchases and freight costs. For that, the shipping Department is involved to check the price of the best freight solution depending on the emergency, availability and routing.
- Checking with suppliers if goods are available. For your information, we have an agreement with our suppliers to get a permanent stock of emergency kits available for us. But in case of huge emergency and demand, we can be in a FIFO situation (First In/First Out). Sometimes the suppliers are not able to provide goods quickly, due to basic shortage of items (i.e.: recently during Central Asia Crisis, due to the demand our supplier was not able to provide more than 20 New Emergency Health Kit by week, when normally the production is up to 50).
- Raise the Purchase Order (PO), to confirm the operation to the supplier and handle the operation to Shipping Dept for follow up.
- Suppliers need normally 24 hours to prepare the goods; packaging, labelling and preparation of export documents export documents with the transit agent.
- Shipment (GMG/SLU): it’s always the most difficult part to evaluate in terms of time and price. It’s totally depending of the offer and the frequency of transport.
- I.E1: During an emergency, most of the freights are done by air, and the planes can be all full. It’s easier to evaluate the timeline if the quantity of goods to be transported permit to chartered a full plane.
- I.E2: For isolated areas, generally there is no direct commercial flight. A transit through other country may have to be done, increasing the timeline and the cost. The Shipping Department is:
- Insuring that goods are ready in time, and the freight is well organized
- Sending pre advice to the consignee
- Following the freight until reception by the consignee or the transit agent at destination point
- Consignee:
- Receiving the goods (process the customs clearance)
- Checking the goods, send receiving or claim report to HQ
- Dispatching the goods according WHO rules
TO ENABLE THE EFFICIENT PROCESS OF THE SUPPLIES, Define clearly and in a realistic way who the contact persons are, to avoid miscommunication and misunderstanding.